This Song: Three Favorites
Tom Waits
This Song is a monthly feature of So Much Stuff, offering a snippet of association to who and where I was when it was a popular release or otherwise entered my radar.
Countless moments of my life have been punctuated by the songs of Tom Waits. Good ones. Sad ones. His music spun on records, tapes, and CDs, but more often played in a moment of dedicated listening than as the background so much music becomes. And, once, heard live in concert on Broadway, during a year my life was utterly falling apart. A performance whose depth, humor, and beauty I can’t even begin to describe.
So, for today, instead of just one, I offer you a few of my favorite cuts. And from an interview that surfaced on my Instagram feed, these words from Waits about songs, which say so much of what I feel about the stories—or anything else—I’m impelled to write.
“I don’t know where they come from. They kind of come from all kinds of places—you build them out of things you see, and remember, and find, and have felt before
and . . . [are] feeling now.”